Many of the functions for the operation of a diesel engine are functions dependent upon the temperature of the fuel so that it is known to provide a fuel temperature sensor. This sensor can be, for example, mounted in the center of the injection pump suction chamber. In this way, it is possible with a diesel engine to assign an appropriate mass of fuel to the air mass conducted to the engine in combination with an electronic control which is known as EDC or electronic-diesel-control. However, the required volume of fuel must be corrected in dependence upon fuel temperature pursuant to an experimentally determined association to inject the appropriate mass of fuel for a specific air mass and predetermined rotational speed. This is known as the so-called full-load control-path correction. The full-load control-path correction and a plurality of other fuel temperature dependent functions such as start control path, starting rotational speed, idle rotational speed and basic-quantity control and the like can be carried out by means of electronic diesel control when corresponding fuel temperature data is present. From this, one recognizes that the fuel temperature data for many functions of the EDC-apparatus are important and at first apparently appear to be an absolute requirement.